Unlike earlier versions of PowerDirector, in 10 the chapter thumbnail can be hidden in the menu designer using the blue distortion handles. They are in the corners inside the white resizing rectangle of the thumbnail.

You need to drag the blue handle in the upper right corner all the way to the upper left corner of the white rectangle.
Then drag the blue handle in the lower left corner all the way to the lower right corner of the white rectangle. You'll end up with a thin diagonal line going from the upper left to lower right corners of the white rectangle. It's kind of tricky. If you do it correctly, the thumbnail will be completely invisible.

Next you need to import your square or round button and place it inside the white resizing rectangle with the hidden thumbnail. You may have to move the white rectangle out of the way temporarily so you can move your button into position. The white rectangle can then be moved back and re-sized if necessary so it encloses your button and the text item that is associated with it.

Your button will fade in and out while the menu is played. To prevent it from fading in and out, you need to drag the left and right edges of the blue (static indicator) section of the keyframe bar so they cover the orangish-yellow (fade-in/fade-out) sections of the keyframe bar, just as in the PiP designer. The keyframe bar is that orange/blue/orange bar at the bottom of the menu designer.

Gateway DX4380, AMD A8-5500 Quad Core 3.2GHz with ATI Radeon HD 7560D; 16GB RAM; 1 TB SATA 7200 RPM; Windows 8 Pro 64-bit; PDR11, PDVD12.

Xerox,

Many thanks for the detailed information on how to get rid of these thumbnail images in Menu Designer of PD 10. I don't think I would ever have figured out your procedure on my own and there is certainly nothing about it in the PD10 manual. I truly appreciate your taking the time to go through this with me.

Shortly after posting my message, I did manage to find a way to get rid of the thumbnails which simply involved using one of the solid buttons downloaded from Cyberlink's Director Zone, but it was not transparent around the button. I finally just used this button on a black background to cover the thumbnail placeholder image. This worked, but doesn't look great. I'll try your procedure at the first opportunity.

Thank you again for responding.

Tom Mac Pro 8-Core 2.8 GHz
Windows 7 64-bit with Boot Camp
nVidia GTX285

I'll have to try your method as well. I think I may have tried that method in the prior version, but wasn't completely satisfied with the results.

One problem I ran into with creating a menu from scratch is the background music in mp3 format causes PowerDirector to freeze up. When I changed the music to m4a format, it didn't freeze. Gateway DX4380, AMD A8-5500 Quad Core 3.2GHz with ATI Radeon HD 7560D; 16GB RAM; 1 TB SATA 7200 RPM; Windows 8 Pro 64-bit; PDR11, PDVD12.

Xerox,

Besides the problem of getting rid of unwanted chapter thumbnail images, the biggest issue that I have with PD10 is in the preparation of 3D menus. I am using PD10 to edit footage taken with my Sony 3D camcorder (HDR-TD10). PD10 handles footage from this camera well, but I have had more failures than successes in creating 3D menus. What happens is that I will complete a project and then create a 3D menu in Menus Designer, and go to Burn 3D Disk. At that point on numerous occasions after several hours of crunching right along, all activity in my cpu's will cease and the authoring stage will never complete. I have finally traced the problem to the fact that I had been selecting the button text and clicking on the Enable 3D Depth button in Menu Designer. Every single time that I have done this, the 3D menu fails to author to completion. If I just leave the button text as 2D and don't enable 3D Depth, then the authoring and disk burning proceed without any problems. I believe this is a bug in PD10 and I have reported it to Cyberlink. I hope very much that it gets fixed in a future upgrade or patch.

One other thing that I have been surprised at in PD10 is that I cannot find a simple fade to black transition or a simple cross dissolve transition. I realize that you can select a drop down that allows you to apply a cross dissolve between every clip in your timeline, but I don't know of any way to click add a cross dissolve between just two clips. As for the fade to black, I found the only way I could do that was through key framing opacity. It seems a bit crazy that with all the transitions PD10 provides there is no simple cross dissolve transition or fade to black that can be dropped on a clip or at the end of a clip. Let me know if I have failed to find something that is obvious to a more experienced user such as yourself.

Tom Mac Pro 8-Core 2.8 GHz
Windows 7 64-bit with Boot Camp
nVidia GTX285

For fade-to-black, you can place a black color-board next to (after) the fade transition, it's only another step. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

For cross dissolve try the Fade transition. Gateway DX4380, AMD A8-5500 Quad Core 3.2GHz with ATI Radeon HD 7560D; 16GB RAM; 1 TB SATA 7200 RPM; Windows 8 Pro 64-bit; PDR11, PDVD12.

Barry and Xerox,

Many thanks for your helpful suggestions. I shall give them a try as I continue editing in PD10.

Tom Mac Pro 8-Core 2.8 GHz
Windows 7 64-bit with Boot Camp
nVidia GTX285